Regional leaders agree on importance of bringing broadband to the Koots
By Tayla Scott
What do you think a room full of 12 significant community leaders in the West Kootenays would be talking about?
If you guessed the future of the region acquiring broadband infrastructure, you’d be right.
On June 17, West Kootenay city officials including the mayors of Nelson, Trail and Kaslo as well as representatives for Trail, Nelson and Castlegar Chambers of Commerce, met at the Mir Centre for Peace at Selkirk College in Castlegar.
These representatives are 12 of the 18 members of the group West Kootenay Economic Development Dialogue. (Group members who were unable to attend the meeting included the mayors of Rossland and Castlegar.)
“The focus of discussion (Tuesday) was how we can strengthen the West Kootenay’s digital economy,” said Andrea Wilkie, executive director for Community Futures Central Kootenay and member of the West Kootenay Economic Development Dialogue.
“An outcome from the discussion was an agreement that the communities at the table are interested in looking for opportunities to collaborate on broadband infrastructure projects that are being implemented,” said Wilkie. “As well as how we can work together to build what’s known as an intelligent community or an intelligent region.
“Broadband infrastructure is high-capacity internet traffic. So broadband infrastructure specifically is a network of fibre optics cable that is 10 times faster than a conventional network,” explained Wilkie.
“Its high speed internet, it also allows you to send large data files easily. What’s different about broadband is that your upload and your download speeds are [synonymous]. With other high speed internet you can have fast download speed but really slow upload speed. So for any type of business that’s looking to upload video files, image files, audio files, data files, having broadband access greatly improves their ability to be competitive.
“So the next step for that project is to pick a task force and to identify a structure for that task force, who needs to be at the table, and then identify action items for that task force for moving forward,” said Wilkie.
There’s not a clear time frame for the project, but it is something the group will continue to move forward with.
“The group includes representation from local government, Chamber of Commerce, Community Futures, Columbia Basin Trust, Selkirk College and KAST (Kootenay Association for Science and Technology),” said Wilkie.
“The goals of the group are to create a unified voice for improving regional economic development; to identify initiatives that could enhance regional economic development and to find opportunities to collaborate about solutions to common issues.
“Our plan will be to have an update for the West Kootenay Economic Development Dialogue for our September meeting. This is something with long term outcomes. I think we’re going to have to identify some milestones along the way,” she said. “It’s about moving in a direction, it’s not a project with a start and end date. It’s about evolving and development.”
The group meets quarterly.
